Your Short Story

I hate it when I get a magnificent idea for a topic for this blog while I'm sitting in class and neglect to write it down. I suppose I could write it in the margin of my notes, but at the moment the idea comes to mind I always think that I absolutely need to find a way to sneak my little notebook out of my purse and write the idea in there. My thought journal organizes my thoughts, but man, I really need to learn to write things down wherever there is available space just for the sake of keeping it with me.

That said, welcome to my new topic. That is, what I was learning in my fascinating Writing of Fiction class at the time I thought of (and subsequently forgot) a topic for this blog. Short stories, and the necessity for conflict.

I'm not talking about a page long, I'm talking twenty-six words long. Twenty-six being the maximum number of words we were allowed to write for our story during class yesterday. Does this seem impossible? Well, if you're a writer, you're already thinking up multiple different sentences that tell a story. If not, well, let me explain.

Ernest Hemingway wrote this one: For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

See the story? This one sentence all on its own brings the reader to ask so many questions. Most questions trying to answer "why were the baby shoes never worn?" Yes, the questions go unanswered, but there is still conflict, still tension. That is what it takes to make a story.

The child ran out into the street while chasing a ball. His mother looked up and let out a scream.

The dog chewed up my only pair of work shoes for my new job.

He leaned in a little closer and Sara could feel her breath catch, but nothing happened. When she opened her eyes, he was gone.

There was so much traffic on the way home that the ice cream melted all over the trunk of the rental car.

These short lines tell a story. There is no climax, no resolution, yet there is story. The Post Secret website (www.postsecret.com) is filled with these short strings of words that tell stories on post cards sent anonymously. As a society, we have become people who think of our life situations in the form of short story.

Status update: My car battery died last night when I closed for work. Fml.

Anyone with any form of social networking, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, etc have become accustomed to these little stories. Everyone has become an author, sometimes only of their own stories. We're all writers, even if the traditional conventions of "being a writer" aren't present.

I find the interconnected relationships of our minds simply fascinating. We are so many, yet we are bound to one another by experience, tendency, and desire.

Cheers to You if You Find This Post

If you are reading this, congratulations. Nobody was meant to find this, but I guess you were, because you did. You've found an easter-egg post. Yay you!

I was walking down the hall at work the other day and noticed my reflection in a window as I passed a dimly-lit room. As I don't normally see myself walking, and it was from profile view, I noticed something I had never noticed before. In a fleeting moment, I saw what my butt looks like when I walk.

It was an interesting thing, I must say. Now, I don't pay much attention to anyone's butt, but I couldn't help but think about them for awhile after seeing mine. A few different thoughts went through my head, primarily the following:

Butts are interesting things.
Almost beings in themselves.
The way the wiggle and jiggle
And giggle as they follow along.
They go to-and-fro
When we walk slow
And bounce up-and-down
At a brisk pace;
Not quite with the rest of the body
Kind of just in their own way
As if having a mind of their own
Shown in their refusal
To conform to our movements.

Yes, there you have it, something of a poem about butts. That's right, you've never really seen it all.

10-mile Mark

So, this week I have been offered two jobs, neither of which I have started. The out-of-school time youth worker position was just offered to me, and two days ago I went to orientation for the substitute TA job and got my I.D. I told the youth worker employer I would call her back. Now it's time to think think think. I wish I had a straight answer so I knew which job to take.

Obviously, this decision would be much easier if I had experience in at least one of the jobs. I do still have employment for the next two weeks so I figure I'll go through with that either way, and hopefully by then I'll have  a clearer grasp of which job suites me. Prayer is always helpful, guys. Please pray for clarity in this decision for me.

So the birthday/new job celebration was grand. We had our free pie and went and ate our favorites at Olive Garden, and also grew up a bit and ordered dessert for the first time. We had never tried an Olive Garden dessert, though we always wanted to, but since we were feeling less poor than usual we went ahead and picked something to share. We ordered the zeppoli (little Italian donuts, like an Italian version of the French beignets, unless you don't know what that is, then I can't help you), it came with chocolate sauce, it was delicious.

While we were dating, I would give G the little notebook I always keep in my purse for his birthday. Literally just days before we met, I had been at Target with a great friend of mine (this was my senior year in high school) and she told me, jokingly, that if I was good she would by me a treat. I think she needed something from the school supplies section, which would be how the tiny notebooks caught my eye, but I remember picking up a little one that said  "notes" on the cover and falling in love. She bought it for me as my treat.

I kept it in my purse as a place to put any little thoughts that came to mind when I wasn't near a computer. Days later I met G at an orchestra festival and we stayed up all night talking. The week after that I started writing at least once a day in that notebook. When his birthday rolled around over half a year later I realized the notebook was almost completely filled with thoughts and poems about him, so I wrapped it with his gift and gave it to him. I replaced it with a new little notebook, and the next year gave him that one as well. He got me a slightly bigger notebook for my birthday the following year, one that didn't fit in my purse, and it has taken longer to fill. However, for his birthday last year I wrote him a poem about his proposal and gave that to him. He loved it.

Nearly a year ago I was in a graphic design class for which the final project was to create and publish three books of our own. You can see them above. Since I already had all this poetry and other writings, I used it. I gave it to G as a wedding gift, and they now reside by our bed. We open them up and read them every now and then, and he still has the notebooks along with all the random torn out pages of other notebooks that I gave him once upon a time. So, here's a little treat for you, a poem from that very first notebook:

Eskimo Kisses

Our faces have been
This close so many times
But all that ever touch
Are our foreheads and noses.
I love the way
You hold me, and
I can't help but wonder
If your kisses would feel
The same as I always imagine.

Blog #10, done! Milestone today!